>I'd rather put it this way: there *is* research (and quite a lot of it too)

that

>*claims* to show that watching violence leads to violent behaviour. The

Bandura

>study has - in my view quite deservingly - been severely critizied on both

>theoretical and methodological grounds. I will not go further into the

critique

>here, I think it is sufficent to say that the fact that you can provoke a

>certain behavior in a laboratory situation doesn't have much to do with

>real-life behaviour in real-life situations.

 

Point well taken.  Though I don't know that I would so readily dismiss all

laboratory research as ungeneralizable to real-life.  All of behavioral

psychology (learning theory) is based on this type of research, and has been

very successful in many ways that go out of the scope of the discussion of

film, so I too will refrain from going deeper into it.  I agree with you to

a large extent, but it is just too strong to say that behavior in lab

situations "doesn't have much to do with ..."

 

 

>And, no, I do not think Banduras hypothesis (the social learning

hypothesis) is

>closely related to the desensitization hypothesis, the former claims that we

>learn certain behaviour from the media, the latter that the media

disinhibits us

>from certain behaviour that is labelled as undesirable for society in general.

 

 

However, the fear of disinhibition [to violent imagery] stems from the idea

that it will lead to imitated violence.

 

-- Jennifer

 

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